in-sight from little and big life experiences

Sita’s True Fire Test

As an ardent lover of Krishna and a fan of the sophisticated epic Mahabharata and its seminal core, The Bhagvad Gita, I’d spent most of my life dismissing the Ramayana as a decidedly lesser thing. Not only did it appear primitive in comparison, but it was also disturbing that its vacillating male God falls prey to his people’s questioning and ends up unfairly discarding his pure and faithful wife. It all seemed to smack of something gone terribly wrong, but rather than analyze it very much, I was content to conclude that even God Himself as Vishnu must have been evolving through his various human avatars, and that Rama was therefore, simply a lesser form than Krishna. Never quite the raging feminist myself, I nevertheless felt a certain resonance when I learned of the feminist cause of righting the injustice against Sita. I chuckled happily over Masala Popcorn at Sita Sings The Blues,when it was screened at Seattle’s lovely Central Cinema.

So, imagine my surprise when in the last six months, the Ramayana began surfacing repeatedly in my consciousness, in all sincerity, begging to be reconsidered. First and most significantly, I discovered that my absolute favorite venue for contemporary theater and performing art – The ACT – is making elaborate preparations for a staging of the Ramayana in 2012. Soon after, a friend mentioned getting together to watch Sita Sings The Blues (again), then for Christmas, another (Caucasian) friend gifted me the gorgeously illustrated Ramayana: The Divine Loophole by Sanjay Patel. Last week a Bollywood song featuring the Rama Lila from the film Swades began looping on my playlist, and then just yesterday, another close friend sent me this unusual poem titled Sita by American poet Jason Schneiderman. (Sita’s pain has gone mainstream!)

So, you see, the Ramayana has been stubbornly screaming for my attention. My ongoing personal experience of love and divinity … and deepening spiritual insight have rapidly deconstructed many previously held constructs. So, all of a sudden, I saw an entirely different possibility in the Rama-Sita-Ravana allegory of the Ramayana.

What if, I wondered, the kidnapping of Sita presents her with a calling for unquestioning faith in the Rama she knows in her heart – the Rama who is God – not Rama the man, the husband, the king? And that such faith in the divine Rama equates to faith in herself? What if, instead of praying for him to come and valiantly rescue and redeem her, for him to take her back as his wife as proof of her sacredness, and so on, she were really being called to just believe these very things about herself – that she is worthy and pure and sacred? That she is loved by Rama (her Divine half) no matter what, no matter what society says, no matter what Rama the man does? What if Sita’s true fire test is her ability to purify her own beliefs about and faith in herself? What if the external circumstances – the “people’s doubts,” Rama’s vacillation – are a temporary illusion, merely hologrammic projections and reflections of her own lingering bits of self-doubt, shame and need for redemption…? And what if all that is required for the illusion of external circumstance to disintegrate and transmute, is her unwavering belief in the highest and best of herself (and therefore, the Rama in her heart) – with no external validation or confirmation required?

But, alas, Sita is unable to overcome this obstacle within herself; so, she is compelled to return to her mother’s womb in pride and shame, an ego-driven departure. Ego wins over divine love. And due to this incomplete business, Sita is born again and again as Woman, bearing the burden and responsibility of societal shame, each time trying in this lifetime or the next, to wash off that stubborn stain, and never quite succeeding because she continues, however subtly, to hope and plead for external sanction, approval, permission and redemption. She is refusing to find completion with the Rama in her heart, something that has been available to her all along!

As a woman I have the opportunity to choose, and so do you. We can cease to carry societal shame and stigma for our bodies and our sexuality, and celebrate instead, its innate purity (even when purely sexual!), divinity, creative power and love. For each of us who can walk through this internal fire – purifying our own inner blocks, prejudices, shame and need for permission and approval – we make possible a Sita who is no longer asked to walk through the external fire to prove herself. And this we can do, without “fighting for our rights,” but through unwavering faith, gentleness and stillness – those uniquely powerful and magnetic qualities of the divine feminine. And so we reinstate the true Rama – the Rama who already lives and glows in our hearts.

To conclude, I return faithfully to … what else but Bollywood! To that song from Swades penned by the illustrious Javed Akhtar and set to melody by the gifted A.R. Rahman, in which the heroine Gayatri Joshi, playing Sita in a staging of the Rama Lila within the movie, is being mercilessly taunted by her torturers: Where is this valorous Rama of yours for whom you faithfully wait day after day? And she responds by fending off their jabs, alternating between pleading for Rama to show up and singing his praises, insisting that he is her Lord, Master and Faith, and that surely he will come. (That is, she’s still waiting for her faith to prove itself by manifesting in the physical.) Until here the Ramayana story is shown as we know it, but then, our evergreen hero Shah Rukh Khan pipes up from the audience (of course) to derail it by singing a few unexpected verses. These go:

Ram hi to karuna mein hain (Rama is in compassion)

Shanti mein Ram hain (Rama is in peace)

Ram hi hain ekta mein (Rama is in unity)

Pragati mein Ram hain (Rama is in progress)

Ram bas bhakton nahin (Rama lives not only in the devout)

Shatru ki chintan mein hain (But also in the mind of your enemy!)

Dekh taj ke paap Ravan (Renounce evil, Oh Ravana, and you’ll see…)

Ram tere man mein hain (…that Rama is in your heart!)

Ram mere man mein hain (And that Rama is in my heart)

Ram to ghar-ghar mein hain (Rama is in every home…)

Ram har aangan mein hain (… And Rama is in every hearth)

Man se Ravan jo nikaale (She who renounces her inner Ravana)

Ram uske man mein hain! (Becomes (One with) Rama herself!)

In other words, Oh Sita, there is no prince charming, no Rama coming to rescue you, to assure you of your worth, to give you what you “deserve.” Your worth is within you; you are already pure, whole and complete, already in unity with your divine masculine. Your Rama is with you and within you.

One Response

It’s really interesting you write this. I’ve been through personal experiences that have convinced me that a woman’s only problem is this lack of self belief and a conditioning that teaches us to view ourselves through the eyes of others, usually perceived figures of authority. Seeking approval is another manifestation of this. When I became conscious of this and started each day by saying only I have the right to judge myself, things began to shift. Still on that journey and love how your piece plugs into it